Remember how I said Easter isn't a huge cooking/baking holiday for me? Apparently I'm a big fat liar. Oops.

The good news? MARSHMALLOW PEEP CAKE! Let me take you on a little journey...

Here I am, minding my own business, laying on the couch, grumbling at the dog (she wouldn't stop licking my feet. These feet are NOT made for lickin'!), leafing through the April issue of Food Network Magazine. Of course it's all Easter-y. Meh. Enough of that. It went in the trash (much to the chagrin of media buyers that think magazines have longevity - in my house, they couldn't be more wrong. No clutter, please!).

Welllllllll the trash needed to go out. Badly. I decided maybe I could take the dog and the trash out in one fell swoop (maybe even to the exact same place? damn dog). You're right, this story has nothing to do with Easter cooking and baking.

The magazine fell off the top off the trash as I was going to tie the bag. How that happens, I don't know. I can drop anything (except eggs - I have good luck with eggs. *knocking on wood*), so I dropped it. It was one of those "meant to be" movie moments, really. It fell open-side-down to a page. I picked it up by its binding, was tossing it in the trash again, and saw what had to have been a veritable sign from marshmallow heaven.

YOU GUYS, IT WAS A 10-INCH-TALL PEEP. A MONSTER PEEP. A DESCENDANT-OF-DINOSAURS-SIZED PEEP!!!!

Okay. Okay. It was a cake. IT WAS A PEEP CAKE! A BIG OL' EASTER PEEP CAKE!! Like this:

Photo: FoodNetwork.com

For the recipe, detailed instructions, and more Food Network goodness, you can check it out here. Me? I'm here to give you the cliff's notes.

First of all, they mention in the directions that you need two glass bowls to bake cakes in (along with a regular 13x9 cake pan). If you've never heard of this, it may sound weird. Just check that your glass bowls are oven-safe. Many are.

Heed the baking time recommended in the directions! While my baking times weren't exactly the same as the recipe stated (I just took them out when my toothpick came out clean), All three cakes took different lengths of time to cook.

Be sure to let the cakes cool on cooling racks for the recommended time (in the original recipe). If you don't, they may crumble a bit when you go to trim them. You don't want them all crummy, do you?! I let them cool for a couple hours, actually, while I went and did other things. Next, you're gonna have to trim them. You can't just pile them up and expect them to look like a Peep Cake! First, trim the corners off your 13x9 cake.

Let cake cool before trimming.

Trim all 4 corners as shown - keep the extra pieces!

Now would be a good time to put the base of your cake on your serving platter of choice, or whatever you're going to store the cake on or in. This is a good time to share one of my favorite tips with you. Ever wonder how people get the cake they're decorating perfectly situated on their cake plate or serving platter without getting any frosting or decorations on said platter?

Take long strips of wax paper and just BARELY wedge them under the base of your cake - so they're easy to pull out when you're finished. This way you'll get the frosting (and sugar) on the wax paper, and it will go away with the wax paper when you pull it out.

Place multiple long wax paper strips just under the edge of the cake, all the way around.

Here is where you'll be glad you saved all the little corner pieces. Take two of them that are relatively the same size and shape and prop them up on the skinnier end of the base cake. These will eventually become the tail of your marshmallow peep cake when you get it frosted. Use toothpicks to secure the tail pieces in place.

Your Peep Cake has a tail!

What's a tail with no head and face, you ask? Well, it's... not appropriate for this blog post. So take both of your bowl cakes and trim off the flat side so it's actually flat and not sorta rounded from baking. After you get 'em trimmed up, stack them (flat side down) with the bigger one on the bottom, like the pictures show.

Put the larger bowl cake on the bottom.

Put the smaller bowl cake on top.

You want the body of the Peep Cake to be as sturdy as the rest. But toothpicks aren't gonna cut it here. As picture-happy as I am, you'd think I'd take pictures of my skewers? I'm a terrible person. Sorry! But you want to take a couple of wooden skewers (or thin chopsticks) and trim them to the same height as your cake. Then, just push them straight down through all three layers of cake to help reinforce the structure of the body. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THEM OUT AS YOU'RE CUTTING THE CAKE AND EATING (same goes for the toothpicks)!!

Speaking of toothpicks, taking one of your remaining two corners of cake and attach it to the small round cake to make the base of the nose. Secure it with a couple of toothpicks.

If you don't like how 'square' the top of the nose is, trim it down a little to round it out.

Awesome. There you have it - a life-sized Peep! Okay, so it looks a little funny without any frosting or sugar. Here's the cool thing. The frosting you're going to make is *actually* marshmallow frosting. Same method.

Freshly homemade marshmallow frosting.

Obviously Peeps aren't white, so you'll need to follow the directions for coloring your frosting. When it's finished, it will be a slightly lighter yellow than the final Peep Cake will be. That's okay, because you're going to cover it with yellow sugar.

I love the Spring feeling of the light yellow frosting!

This is the fun part. Slop that frosting all over the cake! Okay, do it carefully. A little careful, anyway. It will look like you have WAY too much frosting for the amount of cake, but don't fret - you don't. Keep in mind what a Peep looks like. You'll have to cover some parts of the cake with more frosting than other parts to get the right shape. You could definitely take the time to smooth out the frosting with a spatula (offset or regular) so that when it's finished it looks like a nice, smooth Peep. I definitely did not do that (I have no patience when I've got homework waiting in the wings).

You would think this next part would be the most fun part. It's a sugar party, basically. I'll tell you the truth: it is not fun. It's not fun IF you don't like coating your entire work space/kitchen/dining room/dog with colored sugar, anyway. There's no real great way to sprinkle the cake with sugar. If there is a great way, I don't know what it is. If you do know, please PLEASE leave it in the comments for me. Otherwise, let the sugar throwing commence.

It's a sugar party!

Once you've got your giant Peep sugared to your liking (it took me a while, if we're being honest), put it in the fridge as the recipe recommends. The frosting won't completely stiffen up like a buttercream might, but it will firm up a little.

Chill out, peep!!

Remember how I said you'd make your cake presentation prettier and easier with the wax paper? Here's the big reveal. Take the cake out of the fridge and put it on a flat surface. When you pull the wax strips out, pull them one by one. And pull them slowly and firmly, straight out from underneath the Peep cake. You won't leave anything behind that way.

Pull the wax paper out carefully.

With all the wax paper and sugar out of the way, you should have a perfectly clean cake and board. If you don't, take a moistened paper towel and carefully wipe off the remaining sugar. Just be super careful not to touch the cake. Why? Think of what happens to a marshmallow when you get it wet. Yeah, we don't want ooey gooey cake.

Bringing butter to room temperature quickly is the bane of my baking existence. It's no secret that in the world of food, baking isn't my first love anyway. There's so much science behind baking and being exact with measurements and timing, well, isn't really my specialty. A pinch of this and a little-bit-o-that is the kinda gal I am.

Topping the list of my baking woes? Bringing butter to room temp. Friends of mine will tell you that when it comes to some things in life, I'm super planner. Travel planning? Check. Schedule planning for school, by semester? Check. Planning my sleeping-in routine (or lack thereof) on the weekends? Check. Planning to take butter out of the fridge hours before I'll be using it? Big fail.

Frozen butter.

When I decide to bake, it's oftentimes spur of the moment. And when it's not? I don't always think to pull out all of my ingredients beforehand. So, this is a common happenstance in my house. I want to bake. I need butter. Hey, I have butter! Damn, it's in the freezer. So much for "bringing butter to room temp" if I want to bake any time in the immediate future, right? Wrong!

First thing's first - go get the butter out of the fridge (or freezer). Do it right now. Don't procrastinate - that's what got us into this mess in the first place!

Next - and this is easy - cut it up. Yep, just hack away at it. It may seem easier to just pop it in the microwave for 5 or 10 seconds at a time while keeping an eye on it. Don't do that! In most baking applications that call for room temperature (but not melted) butter, there is a reason for the texture clarification. Trust me, I've learned this the hard way a BUNCH of times!

How you cut it doesn't really matter. Size, shape, no matter. I cut it in half lengthwise. Then I cut those two halves in half, lengthwise again. Then I line all four of those pieces up and just cut them into little squares.

Cubed butter thaws faster than whole butter.

Pro tip: Cut your butter up on a surface that is easy to move, like this thin plastic cutting "board" I put on top of my actual cutting board. Why? What if you chop the butter on your cutting board and leave it to come to temperature? Then what? Then you have a blast trying to scrape soft, silky, ooey, gooey, oily butter off your cutting board (or counter, or whatever) and into your mixing bowl. So put it on something! Other easy options are wax paper, aluminum foil, parchment paper, or a small extra cutting board or paper plate.

Spread the butter out! I know we all love warm fuzzies and snuggling up next to our neighbor, but butter doesn't deserve the warm fuzzy treatment at a moment like this. If you leave it in a big pile, it's just about as good as not cutting it up to begin with. Cutting it up AND separating it allows air to circulate around a larger surface area of butter, which brings it to ambient temperature faster.

My butter cubes, warming up by my preheating oven.

To take it one step further (and to warm your butter even faster without actually melting it), put the cubed butter somewhere relatively warm. This depends on your kitchen, obviously. I'll usually put mine on the stove top as the oven is preheating, or I'll set it right next to the stove (pictured above) if I have a burner on. Both of these methods help immensely. If you're not actively preheating or baking already, you could always put the butter on top of the fridge (it's usually warmer up there) or out on the patio (don't put it out on the patio).

There you have it. It's really that easy. Just remember one thing: When I say you're bringing butter up to room temp faster, I mean exactly that - faster, not "fast". There will be some waiting time still, but this will cut it down. I'm usually ready to bake in a half hour or less, which gives me plenty of time to prep the rest of my stuff and then be on my baking way.

It's confession time again. Easter isn't a holiday I really go out of the way to celebrate, particularly in culinary terms. I love (LOVE!) marshmallow Peeps just as much as the next guy (okay, probably more). I have more jelly beans in my house than I have brains in my head. If someone makes a gorgeous loaf of bread or hot cross buns, I'm on it. But me? I just don't throw on my apron for Easter-y things.

Until now. You see, I remembered one small detail about one of my favorite cookies to make: The batter stays a batter, it doesn't really become a dough. So most of the time after you drop it on your baking sheet, you'll end up with some round cookies and some a little more oblong - like an egg!

You need to know about these cookies. I call them "lemon cookies" obviously, which doesn't do any amount of justice to their unique flavor and texture. The best way I could try to describe them would be.... think lemon spongecake meets shortbread meets sugar cookies. They're lemon flavored and have a slightly springy, airy quality to them. Just slightly. At the same time, they're not a cookie that has any rise too it, and they have that floury texture sort of more like a shortbread. BUT they're also substantial enough to be sugar-cookie-ish. They're awesome plain (my preference), but they also take to icing or a glaze BEAUTIFULLY.

EASY EASTER LEMON COOKIES

DIRECTIONSPreheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (or feel free to use a stand mixer). Add your eggs and beat them into the butter/sugar mixture until they're blended in completely. Stir in lemon extract. Add the flour (sift it first!) and beat it until smooth.

Your batter will not be stiff like a cookie dough - it will be more like a stiff cake batter. That's how it's supposed to be - don't fret!

Drop batter onto greased or parchment paper lined baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Depending on the size of cookie you want, baking time will vary. If you want a smaller, more wafer-like cookie, drop by teaspoonful and bake for 6-8 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. For larger cookies (as pictured here), drop by tablespoonful (or 2 tablespoons at a time), and bake 10-14 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Allow to cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing and putting on a rack to cool the rest of the way.

Baked Lemon Cookies - see how they're slightly spongy looking? They're slightly more dense than they look, but still lighter than a shortbread or sugar cookie.

Once completely cooled, cookies will still be slightly tacky on the top for a short time. It's not like your fingers will stick to the lemon cookies, but if you dropped powdered sugar or sprinkles on them.... you might end up with sweet decorations you hadn't planned on. I happen to love these cookies as is, with the slight taste of lemon and the somewhat flour-y, delightfully unique texture.

HOWEVER.. a little icing never hurt anyone, right? Since I don't bake much for Easter, I don't have a lot of super spring-y decorations - so my cookies (some of them) ended up a little more on the bold color side. They tasted good and bold, too!

Iced Lemon Easter Egg Cookies

After digging around, I did find some Valentine's Day decorations. Nothing like a little culinary repurposing, eh?

Lemon Cookies with icing, sprinkles, and nonpareils.

The great thing about this recipe is that the cookies are fairly neutral in flavor (save for the slight lemon taste). You can add flavored glaze, icing, or frosting. You can cook them a little longer so they're crunchier and then dip them in coffee or tea for a fantastic breakfast treat. You can tint them any color you'd like with food coloring. And of course, you can decorate them for any holiday or season.

Send me your pictures - I want to see your original spin on these cookies. Amy@AmysTreats.com